Projection, in the mental health context, describes people railing against their opponents/enemies by decrying their own behavior and beliefs. A recent Fox News article reveals a classic case of projection:
A proposal for California to secede from the United States was submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office Thursday.
The proposed ‘Calexit’ initiative – its name borrowed from the UK’s ‘Brexit’ departure from the EU – would ask voters to repeal part of the state constitution that declares California an inseparable part of the U.S.
A recent poll found that one in three California residents would support a possible secession from the U.S. due to their opposition to President Trump. No mention has been made of the president in the proposal.
If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters, it could be a step to a future vote on whether the state would break away from the rest of the nation.
Well of course! About 1/3 of Californians agree, so by California progressive math, that’s a majority.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the group behind the proposal, Yes California Independence Campaign, was cleared to begin attempting to collect nearly 600,000 voter signatures needed to place the plan on the ballot.
‘In our view, the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values, and our continued statehood means California will continue subsidizing the other states to our own detriment, and to the detriment of our children,’ the Yes campaign’s website says.
California is subsidizing the other states?! Well, if by “subsidizing” one means former Californians fleeing the state to states like Texas that feature sane public policies and an affordable cost of living, I suppose so. History reveals that previous anti-American, separationist sentiment has never been able to garner sufficient support for secession. It probably has something to do with deficient math ability.
America already hates California, and America votes on emotions,’ Marcus Evans, vice president of Yes California told the Los Angeles Times. ‘I think we’d have the votes today if we held it.
Oh dear. About 1/3 of the state is for it, so they have the votes. Perhaps in a progressive state where the dead and illegal immigrants vote, and where others vote early and often, but otherwise, where mathematics is not subject to political influence, probably not.
Mr. Evans is engaging in projection, though I doubt he’s at all aware of it, being apparently a rather self-absorbed Californian sort. America hates California? Not so much.
Most Americans, when they think about California at all, merely shake their heads, and perhaps feel a bit of pity for rational Californians stuck in a people’s progressive paradise. If they spare a few additional seconds of mental energy and focus, they wonder that the state has not already fallen apart. Its lunatic environmentalists have managed to halt the development of sufficient water and electrical resources to meet the needs of its population, and its politicians have ensured most of the population increase has been uneducated or under educated illegal immigrants, people without the skills to contribute meaningfully to the economy while also taking substantial public monies for mere survival. Worse, many of those immigrants have no intention of assimilating, forming instead small—but growing—versions of the third world hell hole nations they fled. This is encouraged by the legislature and the “elite” classes.
Governor Moonbeam The Second
credit: cocosouthia.org
The state destroys farms in favor of bait fish, exalts the criminal class while all but disarming the honest and law abiding, and the legislature intrusively involves itself in every facet of human life while ignoring the Constitution and thinking those that revere it evil and stupid. California’s highways and bridges are inadequate and crumbling, yet the legislature and the second incarnation of Governor Moonbeam are determined to waste untold billions building high-speed rail to nowhere.
The state, as Victor Davis Hanson has often explained, has devolved into a rigidly stratified social experiment with the coastal elites delighting in laws and progressive philosophies they can easily afford, and/or understand they’ll never really have to live under, while the ever shrinking middle class strains under irrational laws, insane and brutalizing regulations, and an ever-rising cost of living that forces them to flee the state. The lower class also sucks tax revenues out of the middle class while contributing little to the long-term financial stability of the state, which is, by any rational assessment, unstable at best.
I could go on and on, but it all amounts to this: Mr. Evans’ formulation “America already hates California” says it all. He, and I suspect other self-imagined elite Californians, do not see themselves as Americans. They’re better, smarter, more moral, more evolved and thoughtful. They greatly fear Donald Trump because he just might force them to obey the Constitution and the law. He might remove their special snowflake status. The California special snowflakes, unlike “Americans,” obsess about everyone else. They are compelled to social engineering, because lesser beings aren’t capable of recognizing and acting on their own best interests.
Why then, can’t such superior beings understand the benefits of being an American state are great, and the costs of secession, short and long term, daunting and ruinous? But Texas has also made secession noises! Indeed, but Texas has its own electrical grid, substantial natural resources, and a people rational enough to sustain themselves, and to put aside secession forecasts when the political situation changes sufficiently.
Hate Californians? If “Americans” think of them at all, they think some of them profoundly silly, unserious people, people whose lack of adult rationality will one day cost them dearly. Secession will only hasten that process. But hey, if that’s what you really want Californians, this American would add only: don’t let the screen door whack you in your skinny, superior asses on the way out of the union.
PRE-POSTING UPDATE: My good friend and WoW!! co-blogger, the incredible Bookworm, who is a reformed progressive, and a current California resident–Marin–writes:
My Progressive friends on my real me Facebook are very gung ho on the idea. They write that California’s economic strength in Silicon Valley, plus Los Angeles because . . . whatever, will mean that California’s departure is a much greater hit to America, than the loss of America would be to California. One and all, they envision a perfect Progressive paradise, with happy illegal migrants singing hosannas to the educated coastal people who saved humanity by severing California from the evil land of Trump.
I don’t comment on their posts. They are so irrational. I keep thinking of John Godfrey Saxe’s Victorian era poem (based upon East Indian stories), The Blind Men and the Elephant. They have the evidence in front of them, but are lacking in senses that enable them to process it:
THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT.
A HINDOO FABLE.
i.
T was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind
ii.
The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: ”God bless me!—but the Elephant Is very like a wall!”
iii.
The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried:”Ho!—what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ‘t is mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!”
iv.
The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant Is very like a snake!”
v.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee. ”What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain,” quoth he; ” ‘T is clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!”
vi.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: “E’en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!”
vii.
The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, ”I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant Is very like a rope!”
viii.
And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong!
moral.
So, oft in theologic wars The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!
Stately McDaniel Manor 
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Maybe Oregon and Washington State want to go too. We’ll need a longer wall.
Dear Amanda:
Perhaps that’s just the impetus Congress needs to really get behind the wall.
I’m thinking the real Americans who live anywhere besides the coastal regions would love to wall off those parts of the state. I have family and friends who have lived there for decades and feel like they are trapped behind enemy lines.
Will the national Democratic party go along? Hillary won the popular vote solely because of California. With it gone, the Dems will have a much tougher time winning a national election and have many fewer Representatives and Senators.
California secede? We can only hope.
4.3 million of us voted for Trump in California. We just might have something to say about leaving.
How utterly silly. As a Californian aiming on leaving as soon as possible, my personal Calexit will occur before the U.S. allows California to leave the union. I think I recall there was a very bloody war fought on the principle of maintaining the union. Again, I hope I have long cashed out of my house, and moved to the heartland. The only thing I will truly miss is our Mediterranean climate which is not duplicated anywhere else in the U.S. By the time we leave, though, all of our kids and grands will have moved to either Austin or elsewhere for opportunity and property and good schools, so we’ll have family and possibly some of our saner friends.
As to the petition signers. Last year I remember a Yale student signing a fake petition to get rid of citizen’s ability in the 1st Amendment to petition the government. That was after she was explained what was in the 1st Amendment, since she didn’t know. But hey, she still signed it. So I imagine that many of CA’s petition signers, supposedly willing to succeed, signed something that does not reflect their actual beliefs
Californians seem to think of themselves as Europeans rather than Americans. They do have at least two things in common with Europe: (1) decadence (which they consider to be sophistication), and (2) enclaves of immigrants who speak foreign languages and practice foreign customs, and who have no intention of assimilating.
Otherwise, California has all the features of a Third World country: an evaporating middle/working class (“What do you call a Californian who works and who pays taxes? A Texan”); an ever-increasing underclass, totally dependent on public assistance; only one viable (and utterly corrupt) political party; and, on or near the coast, exclusive, gated communities (Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Bel Air, Malibu, Pacific Heights), inhabited by the idle rich.
Mike, I wonder if “yes California ” isn’t just a front for La Raza, or a similar organization? I’d give them less than 6 months, before becoming a vassal state of Mexico. Of course they couldn’t leave the union, who would lend them money in order to survive. Think about that one!